Stephen Hawking and the Grand Design

Stephen Hawking has published another popular-culture targeted book of science, this one called “The Grand Design”. Written in collaboration with Leonard Mladinow, it is clear from the cover that Hawking has the spotlight. It is not clear who actually wrote the book. Books intended for the popular market are a special thing. In the introduction to Feynman’s book on quantum electrodynamics, ”QED”, physicist A. Zee wrote that there are three classes of audiences to be addressed by scientists who write books on their specialties: students who might be inspired to continue to study; intelligent, curious laypersons; professionals in the field (note 1). Many authors and publishers, says Zee, wring the meaningfulness from the pages in order not to spook lay readers.

Zee also quotes Steve Weinberg, who claimed that “lay readers only want to learn a few buzzwords to throw around at cocktail parties”. Further Zee quotes Hawking who said that every equation in a book halves the number of readers. Consequently, most books of popular market science contain references such as “given two numbers, the high priests have a way of producing another number”, with implied faith that what the high priests produce is correct, meaningful, and applicable to the topic at hand.

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow have produced a popular book of the kind that references the high priests. There are many things that are stated as fact that must be assumed true without much in the way of proof; proof of the ordinary kind is eschewed, and even history is denied (more on that below). Grand Design finally morphs into a faith-based belief system, after reviewing modern physics in its several forms, and stacking some dubious axioms. The narrative starts early on toward that belief system by declaring in the first pages that “philosophy is dead”. Whether either author has an awareness of philosophical issues outside Materialism is immediately in question, especially since nowhere in the ensuing text are any of the basics of ethics, for example, discussed or even acknowledged. The entire point of the book is to stack up the models in a manner that might sift out a source for the universe that could eliminate the need for a First Cause, much less an intelligent one. One supposes that ethics must fall where it may under those conditions.

The case being made here is that, given a series of assumptions, there are some conclusions that can be made. These conclusions are that:

(a) Time had no beginning due to excessive warp of space-time making time just another crunched up physical dimension (completely unlike time as we know it), thereby creating a boundary-less universe; this is compared to the shape of the earth: there is nothing south of the south pole. Without time at the start, it being all bound up tight, there is no “beginning”, no time south of crunched-time.

(b) Applying Feynman’s “sum over histories” to our universe creates a situation where the universe has many histories, not just one, as the model for quantum particles suggests. Sum over histories, or path-integral, is the idea that a particle takes ALL possible paths to a desitination simultaneously, i.e. all histories apply.

(c) Defining life simplistically allows for high probabilities of creating life; denying free will helps.

(d) And finally, given that gravity provides a negative energy which balances positive energy use for creating mass, a universe can spontaneously create itself from nothing, with nothing to restrict it. Given that the energy in a universe must be zero, gravity and mass cancel out.

The ideas that are reached are philosophical – no need for intelligence in order for intelligence to exist; no need for mass-energy in order for mass-energy to exist, and so on – all based on speculation.

The speculation is embedded in assumptions and even the equations themselves, which are mentioned but not shown. For example, the problem of infinities arises throughout. This amazing statement ensues following a discussion of supersymmetry:

”This [the equivalence of force and matter] has the potential to solve the problem of infinities because it turns out that the infinities from closed loops of force particles are positive while the infinities from the closed loops of matter particles are negative, so the infinities in the theory arising from the force particles and their partner matter tend to cancel out. Unfortunately, the calculations required to find out whether there would be any infinities left uncanceled were so long and difficult and had such potential for error that no one was prepared to undertake them. Most physicists believed, nonetheless, that supergravity was probably the right answer to the problem of unifying gravity with the other forces.” (note 2)

Canceling infinities? Unknown possible uncanceled infinities? Such is the state of the scientific knowledge that is used to reach the beliefs being espoused.

Again,

String theories also lead to infinities, but it is believed that in the right version they will all cancel out” (note 3)

There are also the paradoxes and philosophical presuppositions slipped past:

A paradox: if only the four space dimensions existed in the early universe, and time was a space dimension, not actually time, then how did the expansion progress – given that progress requires time? Motion requires time. It can be argued that physical existence requires time (or there are no measurements possible to confirm or deny it, plus, mass only exists in temporal motion from t(n) to t(n+)).

Another paradox: The no-boundary condition (a presupposition) provides a means to:

“remove the age-old objection to the universe having a beginning, but it also means that the beginning of the universe was governed by the laws of science, and doesn’t need to be set in motion by some god.” (note 4)

Declaring that there was no beginning, it always existed in boundary-less and timeless form, and then declaring that in the beginning scientific laws existed… is self-refuting.

A strange tautology: The statement that “the laws of science apply at the beginning of the universe” is a tautology, IFF science understands what happened, perfectly, and documents that understanding. That tautology is in no way a refutation of anything in particular – it is a definition of scientific knowledge. The idea that science, by its existence, refutes a deity is false. Science produces an infinite regress of next questions. This book does not ask those questions. Questions not asked by the authors are discussed below, near the end.

Presupposition: It is presupposed that quantum theory will subsume Newtonian theory, and that means that determinism is guaranteed, even if it is probabilistic. (note 5)

Another presupposition: It is presupposed that quantum theories of particles will apply to the universe when it was quite small; this is not apparent, because the initial universe was infinitely dense, with particles collapsing into who knows what. This presupposition is a giant leap of faith.

And another presupposition: It is presupposed that there is no explanation for free will if we are just a mass of atomic subparticles (This is also known as Darwin's Horrid Doubt). The immediate conclusion is that free will cannot exist because of our composition, which is deterministic. (note 6) This is a Philosophical Materialist conclusion, not a scientific data driven one. And this leads to the bizarre conclusion that follows:

”Because it is so impractical to use the underlying physical laws to predict human behavior, we adopt what is called an effective theory [ OK we admit that free will exists…]. In physics, an effective theory is a framework created to model certain observed phenomena without describing in detail all of the underlying processes…. In the case of people, since we cannot solve the equations that determine our behavior, we use the effective theory that people have free will. The study of our will, and the behavior that arises from it, is the science of psychology.”(note 6 again)

We must be very clear here. They deny free will based on quantum composition; they do admit to the creation of a contingent theory based on observation that models the existence of free will in humans! They choose the quantum compostion as Truth, and ignore the model based on observations of facts!

Zee sets the environment straight for us: ”Theoretical physicists are a notoriously pragmatic lot. They will use whichever method is easiest. There is none of the mathematician’s petulant insistence on rigor and proof. Whatever works, man!” (note 7) One cannot let observations interfere with the pursuit of a faith.

There is an admission up front in the Grand Design. One must abandon all prior knowledge. Period. The universe, if viewed from the many-histories viewpoint, does not have a single history. The universe, like Fenman’s particles, has many, many histories, and must be examined from the present backwards, not from the beginning forwards. If this is the case, then all knowledge, having been historically derived, is null and void.

This necessarily includes logic, which is based in observations of the characteristics of the universe over many human lifetimes and even eons. Logical demands are of no value in the quantum world, and that is now being applied to the universe, in fact to all universes. And along with free will being destroyed by quantum determinism, logic is destroyed by many-histories.

So the logic of canceling infinities, or uncancelled infinities or any other paradoxes is of no concern.

Where exactly does this leave science? Does science still require experimental confirmation and non-falsification? The authors say yes, and yet their conclusions are firm, unyielding faith statements.

Or is experiment and verificaton an artifact of logic in science which is no longer required for believing in The Grand Design?

The Grand Design, taken alone and without the expertise of cosmology, quantum theory, might seduce the unsuspicious who are truly willing to abandon logic-based rationality in order to stack unproven and likely unmathematical speculations into a belief system. In fact, science might some day robustly lead to a new view of the universe and its origin. But that robustness is not available within the parameters of this book.

Also ignored in this book are the subsequent questions not being asked: Whence gravity? If we start with nothing, why would we expect gravity to appear as a balancing entity, a rule out of nowhere? Why gravity? Why not nothing? Whence the laws of science, or rather the order that science describes, even if probabilistically? What about the mind-connection in quantum mechanics, does that apply to the universe too? Whence the origin of the no-boundary existence of four crunched-up dimensions, and if they just exist, how did they get to the point where time became time? Where are these other universes? Why do we not see new universes all the time and everywhere, if there are truly no constraints on spontaneous creation? Why don't neighboring universes create warp in our universe? It goes on and on.

But I am most curious about this: Were these two authors compelled by determinism to write this book? Or did they have free will to stack all these unknowns into their belief system? That’s the question I’d like to see them answer, non-philosophically, of course. I’ll need data and replication; I'm thinking that the "effective theory" holds, and better than the quantum theory of the universe.

Note 1: A. Zee, from Feynman, “QED”; Princeton Univ. Press, pg xii-xiv.

Note 2. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 114-5.

Note 3. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 115.

Note 4. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 135.

Note 5. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 72-3.

Note 6. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 32.

Note 7. A. Zee, from Feynman, “QED”; Princeton Univ. Press, pg xvi.